A few months ago, Apple released their long-awaited iOS7 update to users around the world. It was the single biggest visual update to iOS since the release of the original iPhone in 2007 and as you may already know, a lot of people aren’t too happy with the redesign.

Apple has been subjected to fierce competition in the smartphone market over the last couple of years (primarily from Android) and after more than six years without a redesign, iOS6′s skeuomorphic design was begining to look pretty tired. Not good news in a fiercely competitive market.

Unlike almost all other brands, Apple actually produces both the software and hardware for their devices but Apple’s core product is definitely their software (i.e. iOS). In some respects, the iPhone hardware actually acts as the product packaging as Apple is primarily a software company. It’s the software that makes their devices unique.

As this guide on rebranding and redesigning product packaging points out, brands often opt to redesign their product packaging with the aim of quickly increasing relevancy and to draw attention to their brand, but in Apple’s case, they opted to do the opposite. Rather than redesign the iPhone hardware (i.e. the packaging), they opted to redesign the software (i.e. the core product), even though some would almost certainly argue that the iPhone hardware is just as overdue for a redesign as iOS itself.

Now, given the fact that an estimated 79% of all iOS devices are now running iOS7, iOS7 should offer a perfect reflection of Apple’s core brand, but is this actually the case? Well, yes and no.

iOS6 vs. iOS7: First Impressions

Image Source

When you compare iOS6 and iOS7, it’s instantly obvious that the redesign is far from subtle. Every aspect of the operating system has been entirely redesigned. It’s this redesign that has received quite a backlash from many Apple customers (and design critics of course) with many commenting on how childish the new ‘neon’ colour scheme looks. This is where the problems begin; I mean, since when has Apple ever been remotely classed as ‘childish’?

A lot of people have also commented on how iOS7 appears to take a lot of inspiration from Android and to be honest, there are certain areas where you would have to agree.

Image Source

If you take a look at the comparison of the iOS7 vs. Android Jelly Bean lock screen above, you’ll notice a lot of similarities. Now, I’m Apple’s biggest fan but even in iOS6, it was pretty clear that Apple borrowed aspects such as the notification centre from Android. While many consumers might not have noticed this subtle copying in iOS6, iOS7 has brought the UI of Android and iOS closer than ever before and now it’s pretty much impossible not to notice some similarities.

This is one of the reasons that I personally think iOS7 is a poor reflection of Apple’s core brand. For decades, Apple has been known as an innovative company, the company that simply doesn’t care what their competition is doing as they’re going to do things better anyway. It’s a somewhat arrogant view but it’s almost always worked. It was proven when they released the original iPhone as there was quite literally nothing like it on the market at all, it was a hugely innovative device.

While it’s evident (at least to me) that Google initially swiped many features of iOS for early Android releases, it seems that the tables have now turned. Apple appears to be ‘borrowing’ features from Android and this certainly isn’t what the Apple brand is known for.

It’s Far From Perfect

Anyone that has upgraded to iOS7 (including myself) is likely to have experienced a few glitches in the last few months. While Apple has been quick to issue updates and patches for the most serious bugs (e.g. security bugs), there are still a lot of bugs remaining and to be honest, they’re annoying.

In all honesty, there’s always going to be a few bugs when such a major redesign is released and while Apple certainly hasn’t got things as wrong as Microsoft usually do with Windows (just look at Windows Vista for example), I believe that there’s more bugs than there should be.

The above screenshot is actually taken from my own iPad Mini and as you can see, things aren’t how they should be. I admit this was a one-off but I’ve also experienced problems with iCloud synchronisation and many other aspects. I also personally think the Calendar app is terrible and that there are many inconsistencies in the UI design (the inverse gradients on the Mail and App Store icons for example). It’s also annoying how the old iOS6 keyboard appears in roughly half of the apps used; I honestly see no reason why this has to be the case.

Once again, it’s here that I believe iOS7 fails to reflect Apple’s core brand. Apple is known for releasing products that are as close to perfect as can be, even if doing so means that they’re late to the market. It seems that this time, Apple has given into pressure from the competition.

We also have to remember that Apple is a premium brand and their products are sold at premium prices. An iPhone 5S is almost double the price of Google’s Nexus 5 handset and aside from Touch ID, many would argue that the iPhone 5S falls short in comparison.

The bottom line is that you pay a premium for Apple products because they’re known for their attention to detail and desire for perfection. The current buggy iOS7 certainly falls short of these expectations.

Fragmentation Between iOS7 And Mac OSX

One of the reasons that Apple doesn’t licence their software to other hardware manufacturers is to ensure perfect harmony between software and hardware. If you’re lucky enough to own both an iPad and iPhone running iOS7, you’ll notice that the design is consistent between both devices as they’re both running the same OS.

Obviously, Mac OSX is an entirely different operating system but prior to iOS7, the design of iOS6 and Mac OSX was consistent too. iOS6 featured the same visual style as Mac OSX and many of the icons were the same too (e.g. Safari and Calendar). Now, with the release of iOS7, there’s fragmentation between the two operating systems.

If you look at the image above (which is a screenshot taken from Mac OSX Mavericks: the latest version of Mac OSX), you’ll notice that the design is still reminiscent of iOS6. Perhaps the most obvious example of this is the Notification Centre which clearly features an iOS6-like design.

You’ll also notice that the overall colour scheme and many of the icons are completely different in OSX than in iOS7.

For me, this is yet another frustrating reason why iOS7 fails to represent Apple’s core brand. Apple are constantly striving for harmony between software and hardware as well as the various offerings of their product line but clearly, iOS7 falls short.

If you compare the UI of iOS7 and Mac OSX in the image above, you’d be forgiven for assuming the operating systems were created by entirely separate companies. If you compare this to Windows 8 (dektop and mobile), you’ll notice that Apple falls short in terms of creating a consistent experience across their entire product line.

Conclusion

Clearly, iOS7 fails to reflect Apple’s core brand in many ways. It’s far from perfect, there are many design-related errors, it’s buggy, the design is inconsistent with Mac OSX and perhaps worst of all, it almost certainly copies Android in some respects.

Despite the many problems though, I think there are a few ways in which iOS7 is the perfect representation of Apple’s core brand. For a start, it’s certainly a bold and ambitious design and you can clearly see what Apple was trying to achieve, it’s just a shame they fell a little short this time.

What’s more, despite the fact that many of the people upgrading to iOS7 don’t like the iOS7 experience, Apple has offered no way out. With Apple products, the deal has always been that Apple decides what is best; the user has very little control over the visual aspect of the UI when compared with something like Android.

It’s nice to see that Apple are still making bold design decisions and aspiring to be the best, I just hope the bugs are sorted out soon!

The virtual currency Bitcoin has in the last few years truly taken the web by storm. It could just be the curency of the future. Although, and even after reading everything I can about it, I still have no clear idea of what it is, nor how it really works. Anyway, and putting our lack of Bitcoin knowledge aside, we have a cracking freebie for all you guys that do understand it.

Designed by the guys over at Freepik, we have a huge Bitcoin icon set for you. The pack contains 100 icons in many varied styles, comes in SVG and JPG formats, and can be freely used in both your personal or commercial projects.

Here they are:

The Bitcoin Icon Set Preview

Download & License

You are free to use the Bitcoin Icon Set in both your commercial and personal projects.

In my early days — prior to selling my web agency and starting uGurus, a hub helping web professionals build successful businesses — I would read books that advocated “networking” as a means to build your business. Okay, great, so I attended a bunch of networking events.

More often than not, these events were pretty worthless.

One time I went to a Village Inn coffee shop, and as introductions went around the room, it occurred to me that a) I wasn’t in the market to buy a house b) I didn’t need a financial advisor because I was broke and c) I wasn’t going to take any vitamins that required me to sell them to my friends and family once I started taking them.

At one point in my “network everywhere” tenure, I joined a group called Social Selection that met at a bar once a week. The purpose of the group was to form business connections through a tight-knit group of social thinkers. I think it was on Tuesday nights. You see, I don’t really remember, because the real purpose of the group was to get totally drunk under the disguise of “networking.”

While I did form some lifelong contacts in this group, I realized that I needed something more meaningful to really impact my business.

Meaningful networking can be tough though. Especially in the web business. For most of our waking hours, our work ties us to the desk under the glow of the monitor. Getting out and shaking hands can sometimes be a huge leap.

Especially if you are an introvert. I’m not. But before I get into my tactics on how to conquer loneliness and build a stellar network, it’s important to know if you are an extrovert (party time!) or an introvert (hackathon!).

Are You an Introvert or an Extrovert?

I’m oversimplifying this to the max, but introverts build energy when they are by themselves and deplete energy when interacting with others. Extroverts are the opposite. They deplete energy while alone and build it while around others.

I don’t think personality definitions are totally black and white. There is a lot of grey. The important thing is to figure out which way you lean.

If you find yourself totally beat after 45 minutes of networking, then you are likely an introvert. It’s going to be difficult to build a successful business if you just stay latched to your computer. Don’t avoid it, just make sure that you have plenty of alone time directly before and following an event. I would also be careful to not schedule multiple events per week. Probably just one event will do the trick. If you attend a multi-day conference, make sure you find time to fill up your tank by zoning out without people around you.

If you find yourself swinging from the chandelier after hour six at an event, then chances are you have extrovert blood. While this is going to make networking a natural talent of yours, it doesn’t mean that meaningful networking will be easy.

I fell into the early trap, as an extrovert, of just going to everything all of the time. I didn’t think much of my intentions. It was just like, “yeah, I’m going to that, and that, and that.” I failed to be strategic about the types of networking I was doing.

On the flip side, my business partner Steve Thiel, is an introvert. He approaches networking with a plan. He knows exactly who he wants to talk to at an event and the topics he’s interested in spending time talking about. He has the sense to accomplish what he wants to and get the hell out of there.

Both approaches can work great and we can each learn from the other. When I remember to “think like Steve,” I get the added benefit of being more strategic, but still leaving plenty of room for chance introductions.

Get Started With Your Industry

One of the best things I ever did was to start attending industry events. Whether it was local meetups about web design or big conferences like Adobe MAX, I forked up the money and allocated the time to get involved with people shaping the web landscape.

Getting involved in the industry of my craft helped me build a network of other experts around the world that I could rely on for contracting, referrals, and brainstorms.

(Brent Weaver interviews attendee at Adobe MAX 2013)

Networking with other like-minded people is a lot easier than breaking into an industry where you have less in common. I like the idea of starting here because it feels natural. Getting to nerd out with fellow webophiles can help break the sense of work-from-home loneliness that we often feel.

You should look at what technologies you use and seek out local meetups around that. For instance, if you are building on WordPress, check Automatic’s website for listings of WordPress Meetups and WordCamps. Same goes for Drupal. Meetup.com has tons of other related meetups around design, development, and entrepreneurship.

My next move would be to attend events that you think possible channel partners might attend. I identified other marketing and ad agencies as great potential sources of continuous leads. There is a national organization called Ad Club that has local chapters all over the United States. This group was a treasure trove of great contacts that all needed web and digital subcontractors.

While it’s great to meet with other people that speak your own language, make sure you don’t overdo it within your industry. It’s easy to get lost in thinking you are making big progress with your craft, but failing to meet actual customers. Most of our customers aren’t going to be hanging out at events, unless of course you are just working with other web pros and agencies.

I highly recommend attending at least one national level event per year. You can expect to pay a decent clip for your conference pass as well as flight and accommodation, but it’s worth it. These events are going to be the cornerstone of you forming a national and international support network.

They will also give you a glimpse of the big trends. This is important when you are setting your annual strategy as a company. To know what big ideas are happening in web in terms of technology, design concepts, and business models.

I’ve never regretted spending money to attend a conference.

Focus on a Target Market

Keep in check how many of your own industry events you attend…unless of course web is your target market. Otherwise, make sure you allow time and money for attending events that your target market attends.

(Brent Weaver and Steve Thiel attend industry conference on Connection & Collaboration)

It’s possible to have many target markets, but if your marketing efforts are going to be effective, you need to pick a target for a fixed period of time.

Almost every target market has local, national, and international level events. Let’s take the example of restaurants. In Denver there is EatDenver, in Colorado the CRA, then there is a national conference and association. I’m sure you can find a TON of additional events surrounding restaurants if you open your target to food brands, supplies, and hospitality.

These are going to be structured very much like our own industry in that, on the local level, they are going to be driven by informal meetups, association-based events, and fundraisers. On the national and international level, they will be organized by the big associations and typically be conferences.

These events are going to be all about talking to potential customers. These folks probably don’t know much about what you do, so the objective in networking within these spaces is getting to know your customer.

You might find some customers, but I’ve found that conferences typically yield a high dose of customer research. More so than actual business.

Attending target market events always kept my technical brain in check. It also would give me a great sense for what the pains and challenges were in the market I was targeting. To go from a conference like Adobe MAX where I might be talking about the challenge of gracefully setting responsive design breakpoints to an educational conference where an attendee asks me, “why do I need a website?” can keep things in perspective.

The rest of the world isn’t thinking about the web as often as we might think they are. They are doing whatever it is they do and we are the ever-obsessed.

I would always err on the side of attending more customer-oriented events than any other type of event. Your business will thank you.

Do Some Good

Early on in my career, I started volunteering my time and expertise to help out causes that I was passionate about. A side effect of this activity was that I met a lot of really amazing people. These people, more often than not, had leadership positions within companies or organizations that they worked at or owned.

For years, this is some of the only networking I did. I didn’t attend industry events or events organized by my target niche. And I got tons of clients from doing it.

I didn’t just volunteer to move stuff. I had my company build websites for organizations, fundraising events, and auctions. I created branding packages, flyers, and business cards.

I went all in.

(Brent Weaver presents donor plaque to library in rural Ethiopia)

I went to Ethiopia on four different occasions. I helped raise hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Served on two different board of directors and eventually was President of a non-profit that built libraries in Ethiopia.

The point wasn’t to network. It was to help save the world and leave this place in better shape than I found it. But, I built an amazing network.

Good people do good.

If you have any feelings of loneliness or lack of network, then start volunteering. Ride the wave for as far as it takes you. Even if that’s a tiny village in rural Ethiopia.

Create a Mastermind Group

My last and final suggestion to help you overcome the loneliness of web entrepreneurship is to form a mastermind group.

Mastermind groups can come in a variety of different formats, but what is a mastermind?

“Mastermind groups offer a combination of brainstorming, education, peer accountability and support in a group setting to sharpen your business and personal skills. A mastermind group helps you and your mastermind group members achieve success.” – The Success Alliance

I have participated in a few over the last several years, but the most effective has been a monthly group that I meet with under strict confidentiality. My group is made of only four people. I have seen successful groups of up to about twelve, but smaller is usually better.

I have also heard of one-off events that attract thirty to forty people for an all day session filled with bar camp presentations. This is a great format for sharing a lot of ideas in a short period of time, but this size of group would need to be broken into smaller sub-groups for higher touch, confidential sharing to happen (which I highly recommend).

At my regular group, we block three hours over an extended lunch for our meeting.

We never miss a meeting. No matter what. We even have a structure of fines for being late, answering your cell phone, or needing to reschedule a meeting. If you are late: $50. If you answer your phone: $50. Rescheduling a meeting: $100. So whatever it is that might make you inconvenience others in the group better be worth the fine.

Every month we get together and review a four quadrant square of our life: business best, business worst, personal best, and personal worst.

My group digs deep to find that top 3% and bottom 3% in our lives that we don’t want to tell anyone. We review our biggest hopes and fears and share stories and experiences as a method to learn from each other.

This absolute top and bottom needs to be covered by a group of peers that meets under a strict confidentiality agreement. You either need to join a group like EO to hop into an existing structure, or create one yourself. I was in EO’s incubator three years ago, and even though I am no longer in Accelerator, I continue to meet with my group every month.

Our group steers clear of advice and focuses on experience share through Gestalt-based leadership. Typically, each month one of us presents on a topic that is important to our life. These presentations usually get a few hours of prep time from the presenter and a coach prior to our monthly meeting.

Over several years of having a monthly mastermind group that is confidential and safe, I have found that I have a place to voice concerns that I would have otherwise kept bottled up. Things about my relationship, family, and business can get perspective from my group prior to bringing them into the light of the rest of my life.

Confidentiality is the strongest of contracts in this group, so I can’t really discuss specifics of what we’ve uncovered. But I know that my personal and business life would not be able to achieve what I can today without them.

I think having a regular, confidential mastermind group is a requirement for any entrepreneur.

Event-based networking and doing good will only take you so far. Masterminds get into the deep and meaningful topics. You might opt to participate in a business or idea-specific mastermind instead of a business and personal focused-group like mine. That is totally fine.

The basis of a mastermind group is that you share. Ideas do best when you shine the light of others onto them, and they usually get even better when the
two different ideas have sex (think “video + internet” or “encyclopedia + internet”). Masterminds are a great place for this.

Overcoming Loneliness is a Marathon

When I first moved to Denver, I didn’t know anyone. Seven years later, it’s hard not to run into people at the art museum, book store, or grocery store. One time I was out in LA at Hotel Standard on the roof playing ping pong, and I ran into one of my Denver contacts. Now this doesn’t really mean anything except that I feel anything but alone.

My network is the first place I go when I need something. If I’m making an important hire, thinking about a new idea, or wanting to meet new customers, my first question to myself is, “who do I know?”

From there I find the best people, answers, and customers.

If you are feeling alone in your pursuit of success…or if your only human interaction happens in less than 140 characters, then it might be time to think about your network. But take my advice, don’t go to a “networking meetup” at Village Inn.

Be intentional about how you get out of the basement. Make it meaningful by attending industry events, meeting customers in your target market, volunteering for a great cause, or creating a mastermind.

You can sign-up to our awesome weekly newsletter for some more amazing articles, resources and freebies.

Worth Reading

Consider if you actually need jQuery, you might not…

Blair Enns shared the email line that’s client repellent

Sam Norton published a beginner’s guide to SASS

Ian Murphy wrote about how RWD is still the future of web design

Aqeel asked the question: What’s with putting the CSS in the head?

Steven Bradley wrote about how to use custom properties for cascading variables

Alex Young wrote about the art of handling errors

Boxes That Fill Height (Or More) (and Don’t Squish) from Chris Coyier

We published 40 Tiny Web-Based Apps & Tools for Web Designers

New Resources & Services

A List Apart Pattern Library

Nightwatch.js – A UI automated testing framework based on node.js
0

SVGMagic – jQuery SVG fallback plugin
1

Image Lightbox (Responsive and Touch-Friendly)
2

DevDocs – Combines multiple API docs in a fast & searchable interface
3

Sitespeed.io – Analyze your website speed and performance
4

One Page Scroll – Create an Apple-like one page scroller website
5

Sublime Text Cheat Sheet
6

Designer Freebies

iPad iOS7 Kit (Sketch)
7

Stripes & Co – A Line-Styled Icon Set (65 Icons)
8

Juntos – One Page Template for Charities (HTML & JS)
9

UUUU Icon Set (30 Icons, SVG)
0

Apple Devices Mockup
1

LEGOlize Yourself (PSD)
2

Here are the best freebies for designers from January 2014. We have free GUI templates, icon sets, fonts, Photoshop brushes, PSD templates, PS actions… and everything else in between.

Free Fonts

Blenda Script

Blenda Script

Last year French designer Zaven Najjar set himself the laborious task of redesigning, in his own unique style, a classic rap music poster everyday for 100 days. Dr Dre, Snoop Dog, Eminem, Jay-Z, 50 Cent, Tupac, and many, many more are all in there. He has inventively called the completed 100 poster series Raposters, and they can all be found here.

Below we have highlighted our favorites:

The Raposters Poster Series:

Dr. Dre & Snoop Dog – Still Dre

Tupac Shakur – Changes

Booba – Ma Definition

Cypress Hill – Insane in the Brain

Eminem – Lose Yourself

DMX – Where the Hood At

50 Cent – 21 Questions

Run DMC – My Adidas

Wu Tang Clan – Protect Ya Neck

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Beastie Boys – Intergallactic

1
Snoop Doggy Dog – Who Am I (Whats My Name?)

2
Jay-Z – Picasso Baby

3
Nas – I Can

4
Public Enemy – He Got Game

It is that time of the week again, a chance for you to sit back and enjoy some of our favorite web and mobile designs from this past week.

You may also like to browse the Web & Mobile Creativity Archives.

The Conference by Media Evolution 2014

Sydney ✈ Stockholm

nballstats

Bakery Interactive

Red Bullet

Heart of the Arctic

Themes Kingdom

Abby Madison

Vigorsolcaptainice

Responsive design has been an emergent practice for web designers since Ethan Marcotte’s 2011 book introducing the concept in detail. But two and a half years later, adoption of the practice has been slow,  even though this year it’s likely more people will access the Web via smartphones, tablets and other new devices than desktop and laptop computers.

That’s why you’ll hear the designers on the bleeding edge of web design at conferences, like Future of Web Design in London this April, urging their peers to learn the fundamentals of responsive design and begin pitching responsive sites to their clients.

User experience designer and researcher Stephanie Rieger said people will not only read the Web but buy things if the mobile experience is right. That experience can be tailored to suit a multitude of devices, she said, using techniques such as responsive design.

“Right now, we’re at this critical stage where there is an awareness of responsive design and an awareness of mobile,” Rieger said. “It’s not a nice to have thing anymore; it’s how your customers are reaching you every single day. So it’s time to get it right.”

Rieger pointed to a few major sites that recently had a mobile-over-desktop traffic tipping point: ESPN.com, the world’s most popular sports news site, had its mobile readership eclipse desktop in September 2013, and this holiday season more than 50 percent of shoppers buying from Amazon.com did it from mobile devices. Cutting edge web designers are creating responsive sites, said web designer Jason Pamental, but like with any technological shift there have been slower movers that haven’t come around.

“The vast majority of web designers don’t know anything about responsive design, and we can’t lose sight of that,” Pamental said. “There are still a whole lot of people that design and are doing things that end up on the Web who don’t understand what responsive is, and how much of their design knowledge would be useful online if they just understood how the Web works.”

Part of the problem, Pamental said, is not being able to educate clients on the benefits of a flexible site that offers a rich experience to users no matter how they’re accessing the Web.

Here are a few ways to illustrate Pamental’s point: Using the source code search engine Meanpath, there are 1.4 million sites that use a media query (asking which device is doing the viewing) with “max-width” close by (bespeaking of responsive design).

MeanPath crawls “over 200 million websites” for HTML source code. Using the roughest back-of-the-envelope math, that means there is only a maximum of 0.7 percent of sites crawled by Meanpath that use responsive design. This isn’t the most precise methodology; the point is we’re talking about less than one percent of all websites being responsive.

Guy Podjarny, the CTO of Web and Mobile at Akamai, recently tackled this in his blog with somewhat different results: he created a test that looked for a horizontal scroll bar appearing on smaller screens. After crawling the top 10,000 websites, he discovered 12.2 percent passed his test as responsive design. 

Both Rieger and Pamental will speak about the necessity of designing with mobile in mind at the Future of Web Design conference in London, April 7-9. Rieger will deliver a keynote about the future of mobile, and how it will shape the way we design, live and interact. Pamental is giving a session on responsive typography, something he’s written about recently on Typecast.com.

One the benefits of committing to learning responsive design now is the bleeding edge adopters have already found several pitfalls of the practice, and can advise around them, Rieger and Pamental said.

Pamental said that once fast broadband internet made it into millions of homes, designers started to get lazy and have created bloated sites because they could depend on the very low latency to pick up the slack. That is not going to happen on the majority of mobile phones.

“We’re talking about small screens and crappy connections,” he said. “You know they’re not going to have a high speed experience, but you still have to deliver robust experience quickly. Speed matters. That’s the first element of your design, as to whether it even shows up in the first place.”

Rieger pointed out that this also includes hardware constraints, especially as the array of Android devices has exploded. That makes it critical to test your sites on multiple browsers and devices before launching. Just a few well-chosen test devices can go a long way to inform how a design is displayed and behaves on different sized view ports and form factors, she said.

“Most sites are still way too heavy, and many responsive sites don’t properly account for multiple methods of interaction,” she said. “Over the next year, people really need to think about how to get device testing into their workflow. If you’re a freelancer or small company, you don’t need to break the bank. Even a few test devices are better than none. The difference between a site that’s only been tested on the desktop, and one that’s been iteratively tested on even just four or five devices can be dramatic.”

In this post we have collected a varied assortment of tiny web-based apps and tools that have been built with the purpose of solving a specific solution and act as precious time-savers for web designers. They are those tools that may not be very well known, are not the most powerful of apps, but are really useful and do serve their purpose extremely well.

You will find apps that will help you to create icon-fonts, calculators for working out an elements width in % from PXs, apps that will allow you to create beautiful typography, tools for validating and sorting your CSS, super-simple editors, resources for quick reference, sprite generators, PSD validators, Base64 converters… and much, much more.

Get ready to start bookmarking…

Daturi – An app for converting images to Base64.

px-em – A PX to EM calculator.

PSD Validator – Tool to find out how well your PSD files are structured.

Create CSS3 – A super-simple CSS3 generator.

SassMe – An app for visualizing SASS color functions.

Responsive Wireframes – Quickly create and share RWD wireframes.

iconmelon – Quickly create a library of SVG icons.

GlyphSearch – An app for searching for icons from Font Awesome, Glyphicons, IcoMoon & Ionicons.

Raw – An app for createing custom vector-based visualizations on top D3.js.

Random User Generator – An API that offers you a randomly generated user.

uinames – A simple tool to generate names for use in your mockups.
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FontAwesome Finder – Quickly and instantly search FontAwesome icons.
1

typesetwith.me – A web-based typography and legibility sandbox.
2

Type Scale – A typographical visual calculator.
3

Contrast Ratio – A tool to calculate color contrast ratios.
4

CSS Beautifier – A tool that will automatically ‘beautify’ your CSS.
5

RQRWD – A calculator for working out elements width in % from PX.
6

Z-Bugs – A tool to minify and Gzip compress your CSS and JS quickly.
7

Iconogen – A tool to for generating favicons, Windows 8 Tiles and iOS7 icons.
8

MQtest.io – An app to identify which media queries your device responds to.
9

NTH-TEST – A nth-child and nth-of-type tester.
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11h Re-Size – A tool to check web designs against available screen resolutions.
1

CSS3 Generator – A simple CSS3 generator.
2

SpinKit – Simple loading spinners animated with CSS.
3

SVGeneration.
4

A handy web-based web developer checklist.
5

Makeappicon – A tool for generating app icons of all sizes.
6

Red Pen – An app for uploading your design and getting live feedback.
7

TypeWonder – A useful tool for testing web fonts on the fly.
8

Editor – The simplest Markdown editor ever!.
9

Clipping Magic – A handy tool for removing image backgrounds.
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Fontello – Generate an icon font from Font Awesome, Entypo, Typicons, and many more icon sets. .
1

OverAPI – Collecting all the cheat sheets in one place.
2

Flat UI colors reference.
3

Unicode character table.
4

Fontsatic – A tool for creating custom icon fonts (over 6,000 icons to choose from).
5

JSHint – A tool to detect errors and potential problems in JS.
6

extractCSS – A tool for extracting ids, classes and inline styles from HTML and outputting them as CSS.
7

SpritePad – Create and edit CSS sprites.
8

Css2Less – CSS to Less converter.
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CSSComb – Sort CSS Properties in a Specific Order.
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There are many ways to improve your efficiency when working in any media based industry. One of the simplest and most effective ways I’ve found is to “draw your map”. Drawing your map is essentially the process of taking your task at hand, and mocking it up into a visual form. This can be anything as simple as writing down words with arrows and create a visual workflow, to creating a series of thumbnails or storyboards to show the progression of an idea. When relating this to web design, developers will often use a method known as wireframing.

Image Source: Wireframe Sketch via Shutterstock.

If you don’t know what a wireframe is, it’s basically a generalized mockup representing the layout of a website. There are no definitive rules for this process, and that is why it is so effective and adaptable. Some people will make quick paper sketches of simple shapes and scribbles for text to show elements and their general orientation to each other. Others prefer to create digital wireframes that can be more precise and contain more detail. As long as it succeeds in creating a foundation for your mind to flow off of and reference quickly, it’s doing its job.

There is a bit of a debate on whether wireframing is worth your time or not. As you have likely gathered from my previous statements, I find wireframing to be very much worth the time. That being said, there are a few things that should be considered and taken into account that make wireframing worth the effort.

Don’t be clingy, keep an opened mind

Some designers dislike wireframing because they feel it limits creativity and creates boundaries. You may put a lot of heart, thought, and time into the initial wireframe and don’t want your time to be wasted, and thus push the final design in a direction that works with your original concept.

To avoid this passive mental crutch, you need to create a separation between wireframe and final design. Know the wireframe is a nothing more than a reference point, and if you come up with a design that better suits the user experience, or will in anyway alter the site for the better, don’t be resistant to change. Your best idea is seldom your first.

Gauge your time

The overall purpose of a wireframe is to save time in the long run. There is nothing more frustrating than being happy with a final design, and then finding out you forgot to account for an extra set of text, or a specific call to action. You then have to push things around, or redesign elements to accommodate. This is your chance to give yourself a visual checklist that minimizes that additional time wasted.

The question must then be asked, how much time is acceptable to spend on this mockup phase? Well, this changes depending on your situation and preference. If you are making a site for a client and have a very small time budget, you probably don’t want to spend more than 10-15 minutes so you have more time allotted to the more detailed art and design. If you have more of a flexible timeframe or it is a personal project, it may be beneficial to flesh out your ideas a little more and even mockup multiple wireframes. Overall, this is something you will have to weigh for yourself on a case by case basis, and find what suits your best interests.

Find your own flow

Like anything else you do on a regular basis, as you make a habit of wireframing, you will become better at it. The key to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of this process is for it to feel so second nature you start establishing a system that works. Maybe it is using a consistent naming convention for large amounts of labeling, or the use of quick symbols to represent elements that are unique but consistently used. My point is, do not be discouraged if you feel you are not fast enough. You can only get better, and will.

Image Source: Browser Frame via Shutterstock.

After getting used to this pre-planning mindset, you will likely start to connect the dots on ways “Drawing your map” can be applied to other aspects of your work. Using myself as an example, I am both a designer and front end developer. Starting out skinning, with my first few websites I began to realize the majority of my time was wasted on backtracking due to something that initially seemed simple, but ended up using a CSS trick, and altered HTML.

Since then, whether it is for my own design or someone else’s, I always start by making a wireframe of my skinning process. Rather than overall design elements, I layout my div structure, mark up my common classes, and jot CSS notes for dimensions, main colors, or positioning. This easily cuts my skinning time by a quarter or more, depending on the sites complexity. I’ve gotten to the point where I can code out the HTML and CSS and have the skin 80% finished and flawless the first time I load it up in a browser. It took time to nail my system, and I keep adapting it, but you can apply the same concept to anything you do. You are your most valuable asset, make yourself evolve.

Your mind is a terrible thing to waste

Employers love to see your thought process and how you handle the entirety of a project. No matter if you are fresh out of college or just looking to upgrade your current career status, wireframes can be a great tool to have in your back pocket. It sends a really strong message when you can go into an interview with a few wireframes, a couple of digital designs mocks, and a final product.

Doing this, you can walk through the mentality behind one or two of your best pieces of work, rather than pulling up your two best sites and a few better than average ones in a browser. This plays on the simple principal of quality over quantity. If you explain the way you work, it separates the thinkers, from the drones.

With this idea in mind, be sure to save your wireframes and various design compositions, even if your final design ended up nothing like your original wireframe. Approaching projects with this kind of mentality, gives even more justification to wireframing. Now not only are you mocking up your thoughts for the immediate task at hand, but also making a personal investment that you can later utilize to market yourself and display how you can work a project in full, from start to finish.

This mindset also works off of the first two issues I brought up. If you feel that diverging from your original wireframe makes your original time and effort wasted, you are sadly mistaken. When referring to a portfolio, this simply shows that you are willing and able to adapt your own creativity. It also shows that you can prioritize the website’s quality over your own sense of perfection to ultimately produce the best possible end product.

Concluding

Overall, it does not really matter what I or anyone else tells you, the decision to wireframe is yours alone. Most designers tend to be very “right-brained”, so mapping out your ideas in a visual fashion will make it easier to channel your thoughts. However, if you tend to be more calculating and work best from memory and written words, perhaps this would be more cumbersome than what you feel it is worth. If nothing else, I hope you can take away a different sense of what wireframing can be. A tool, that if properly used, can increase efficiency, make you a psychologically better designer, and assist in marketing yourself in the years to come.